Autodesk Vault

Autodesk® Vault offers a comprehensive set of powerful tools and features to help engineers, designers, manufacturers, architects, and construction teams more efficiently organize, manage, and track their design data. Vault has plug-ins to AutoCAD, Inventor, Civil 3D, Revit and many others. The Vault product line consists of 4 products so that users can get just the right features they need at just the right cost. The base Vault offers fundamental data management capabilities and is included with many Autodesk® software products, e.g. Autodesk® Factory Design Suite, Autodesk® Product Design Suite, and Autodesk® Inventor® software. For more advanced PDM functionality and features, we offer a premium line of Vault software, including Vault Workgroup, Vault Collaboration, and Vault Professional.

AU Virtual: Getting Started with Autodesk Vault ProgrammingA two part video tutorial giving an overview of the Vault API, and all the capabilities. Code samples included.Part 1 | Part 2

Video: Part 1 - OverviewA short video explaining the API features at a high level. Logistics issues, such as licensing, are also covered. Presentation

Video: Part 2 - Server CommunicationA video tutorial explaining how to communicate with the Vault Server through the API, and the basic concepts and common workflows, such as sign-in, sign-out, file upload and file download.Presentation | Demo

Video: Part 3 - Vault Explorer CustomizationA video tutorial explaining how to extend the Vault Explorer, demonstrating how to write custom commands and tab views, also going over tips and tricks for getting the most out of Vault Explorer customization. Presentation | Demo

Video: Part 4 - Job Server CustomizationA video tutorial explaining how to extend the Job Server feature, demonstrating how the Vault API can be used to create custom jobs and custom handlers for those jobs. Presentation | Demo

Video: Part 5 - Business Logic Customization Through EventsA video tutorial explaining how to extend the Vault business logic through the API event mechanisms. The video goes through each of the four event types, learning the pros and cons of each type, as well as best practices.Presentation | Demo

Samples and Documentation

Learn more about Vault's API through Vault's API documents and samples found in Vault SDK.

Vault now has the capability to create and store custom entities. This is useful in cases where you want to store data in your own object type. Custom entities can hold properties as well as links to other files, items, etc.

All Vault 2012 clients are able to communicate with the Vault 2013 Server without the need for an update because the web service APIs are compatible with the previous release.

IJobHandler has been expanded to allow your extension to run at certain times in the lifetime of JobProcessor.exe. There is a hook for startup, shutdown, sleep and wake.

More information can be found in the “What’s New” and “Changes” pages of the Vault API documentation.

Tools

The SDK is delivered by every Vault Server. You can find the SDK in the Vault Server installation folder, for example “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\ADMS 2013\SDK\setup.exe”. (Vault name may be Vault or Workgroup or Collaboration or Professional)

*These Vault SDKs are subject to the license agreement that's displayed for acceptance during their installation process